By all accounts, the Wright Brothers succeeded where seemingly everybody else failed: They performed the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft. But they were also colossal failures, namely how they failed to monopolize the aviation industry.
At one point, they had a monopoly on the industry and were by all accounts the kings of aviation. Yet within a few years, this monopoly had disappeared and the Wright Brothers were quickly overtaken in terms of wealth and size by other aircraft manufacturers.
When Wright Aeronautical merged with Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Company in 1929 to form Curtiss-Wright (which still exists today), not only were they the smaller of the two main firms in the merger, they had the humiliation of putting the Wright name last.
As for the Wright Brothers themselves, they’d gotten out of the industry in 1915, after Orville sold the Wright Company and its patents and Wilbur’s death in 1912…
Who Were The Wright Brothers?
But before we can discuss exactly why they failed, we must first look at exactly who the Wright Brothers are and why in fact they are so famous…
Early Years
The Wright Brothers – Wilbur and Orville – were born on April 16 1867 and August 19 1871 in Millville, Indiana and Dayton, Ohio respectively. Both were among the seven children born to Protestant bishop, Milton Wright, and his wife, Susan Catherine Koerner.
Growing up, their father was constantly traveling, leaving his wife to raise their young family often on her own. Thankfully, Susan was a gifted mechanic in her own right and taught her children the basic principles of carpentry and mechanics.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Wilbur and Orville began building things from an early age, often asking their mother to check their designs before building them, and getting their mother to test them too.
As their father was a bishop, both brothers were sent to school to receive a formal education, though when the family abruptly moved from Richmond, Indiana to Dayton, Ohio in the 1884s (as a result of his father’s job) prevented Wilbur from obtaining his diploma.
Not long after the move to Dayton, Orville dropped out of school to start a printing company, building his own printing press with Wilbur’s help. In 1889, the printing business began printing its own newspaper, West Side News.
With Orville as the publisher and Wilbur as the editor, the paper grew in popularity and was converted into a daily (opposed to a weekly newspaper as it had been before) in March 1890, under the name The Evening Item.
Due to fierce competition, this new paper lasted only four months and their company instead began printing the Dayton Tattler, a weekly newspaper published and edited by Orville’s close friend, Paul Laurence Dunbar.
In December 1892, the brothers attempted to capitalize on the bicycle craze then sweeping the nation by starting a bike repair and sales shop, known as the Wright Cycle Company, based out of the same building as their print shop.
Interest in Aviation
Using their love of tinkering, the brothers soon gained a near-encyclopedic knowledge of how bicycles worked, and in particular, how to make them easier and faster to ride. In 1896, they began producing bicycles under their own brand.
That year, the brothers also discovered the world of aviation. Reading popular magazines of the day, the brothers saw photos of German aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal and his many glides, and were immediately drawn to aviation.
When Lilienthal’s glider plunged to the ground mid-flight during a demonstration in August 9 1896, and killing him, the Wright Brothers took note. It was here where they found their calling.
They decided to fully commit to researching how to create powered flight and began reading the research published by the likes of Otto Lilienthal, Octave Chanute, Leonardo da Vinci, Samuel Langley and Sir George Cayley.
Despite Lilienthal’s demise at the hands of a glider, and the aviation community as a whole shunning his notion of practicing flying a glider to master powered flight, the Wright Brothers agreed with his hypothesis and started their own research where Lilienthal’s left off.
To that end, they spent much of the money they earned from the Wright Cycle Shop on developing a series of gliders, starting with the 1899 kite (used to test wing warping for roll control) and continuing with the 1900, 1901 and 1902 gliders respectively.
First Powered Flight
Establishing Legitimacy & Patent Wars
How did the Wright Brothers Fail?
By the start of 1905, the Wright Brothers had a virtual monopoly on the industry. Not only had they successfully built the world’s first heavier-than-air aircraft and were the only people knew how to fly it, they also had more designs on the way.
Yet they let this monopoly they had slip away.
Within only five years, there were dozens of other aviation pioneers all over the world, all with their own fleet of designs. Not only were there more designs, they were often better and cheaper than the ones produced by the Wright Brothers.
Why did They Fail?Â
But it’s all well and good saying that they failed. Not in their primary objective of discovering powered flight, but rather, their failure to capitalize on the monopoly they had.Â
Secrecy
Patent Wars
Price & Ease of FlyingÂ
Despite all we’ve talked about, the Wright Brothers did put the 1903 Wright Flyer into mass production, so they could capitalize on the powered flight craze that helped set off the Pioneer Era of aviation.Â
With the only working heavier-than-air aircraft capable of powered flight, both brothers being the only two people who knew how to fly it and them recognizing the military applications of powered flight, the 1903 Wright Flyer was not cheap.
In fact, when the US Army Signal Corps acquired the Wright Flyer as an observation aircraft in 1908, it had a price tag of $30,000 ($902,000 adjusted for inflation) per unit. Safe to say, it wasn’t cheap.Â
Unlike today, where military pilots are trained by the military, each of these pilots had to go to the Wright Brothers’ shop and be taught by one of them personally.
This too was not easy.
Despite enabling it to turn when nothing else could, the wing warping technique pioneered by the Wright Brothers made flying incredibly difficult.
You see, you manually had the pull the wings to make them move (hence why the pilot laid down in the prone position) which was not always easy, as the wings often didn’t want to move.Â
By comparison, Glenn L. Martin’s method of using ailerons to do this was far more intuitive and made flying the aircraft much easier. Not to mention safer.
It didn’t take long for pilots and the military as a whole to realize this, and Martin-made aircraft quickly won contract after contract at the expense of their Wright counterparts.
They Weren’t Businessmen
Since the beginning of this article, we have approached this topic as though both brothers were businessmen who missed a great opportunity to become the Amazon of the industry. But that overlooks one key factor: they weren’t businessmen.
Yes, they got into aviation to make money, but they were engineers at heart. They saw a problem and decided to use their incredible intellect to solve it. Not make a quick buck.
After building and flying the original Wright Flyer, Wilbur and Orville put it into production. But despite having a monopoly on the industry at the time, the Wright Brothers did something unheard of: they built on it.
Only a few months after they first flew the original (1903) Wright Flyer, the Wright brothers unveiled the improved Wright Flyer II, featuring more powerful engine, white pine instead of spruce wood fuselage and a slightly altered wing design.
Indeed, whilst only one of them was build (and later salvaged for parts), the Wright Flyer II was developed into the Wright Flyer III, which was similarly built to be better than its predecessor. Likewise, only one Wright Flyer III was built.
Whilst they were selling the 1903 Wright Flyer as businessmen, they were constantly improving on its design as engineers, placing technological advancement over profit, hence their building of only one Wright Flyer II and III respectively.
It is entirely possible that despite all their secrecy, patent wars and lawsuits, they saw themselves as engineers first, and businessmen second, instead just preferring for the world to know and remember them for being the fathers of modern aviation, not cruel businessmen out to make a quick dollar.
What do you think about the Wright Brothers? Did they truly fail? Tell me in the comments!
Of course they didn’t fail. Their goal was to develop a vehicle for controlled flight and they succeeded. Unfortunately, as you state, they weren’t successful businessmen. If maybe they would have hired a manager or someone to handle the business side they could have focused on perfecting their design. Who knows what they could have come up with without having to sorry about patents, lawsuits, etc.